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It’s hard to believe I witnessed this launch—my very first shuttle launch—seven years ago. (Not from the above vantage point, obviously.) Truthfully, it’s hard to believe I saw it at all. I never stop feeling amazed, and humbled, and so fortunate to have been there. I remember the launch as a whole-body sensation: the vibrations from the ground to the top of my head, and the crazy crackling sounds. The raw emotion. It was a beautiful thing.

This is always a hard anniversary for me. I’ve talked about it before, And I find myself talking about it again, because 15 years later, the memory is just as vivid: I was 24. Still fairly-newly-wed. Working on grad school applications. Still thought I was going to be an astronaut someday. (“Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong.”)

It was a Saturday morning. I was plinking away on the internet in my pjs. I hadn’t paid attention to the flight schedule lately—I don’t think I was really aware there was a mission aloft at that moment. And then my mom called, tearful, to ask if I’d heard about the Space Shuttle. I got online and stared blindly at the photos coming in.

I ran to the NASA homepage to look up the mission. I read the crew manifest. I read it again. One name stuck out in particular, and it took me a minute to figure out why. I flew to my bookcase, grabbed my scrapbook of autographs, and there it was:

I remember staring at that autograph. Frozen. Nauseated. I don’t remember much after that, except a lot of crying. Grieving. I still mourn the loss of Columbia, and the end of the Space Shuttle Program. (Seven years now; I never really got over it.) I don’t mean to lessen the other two anniversaries with this long account, but this was the one that was most impactful on me personally.

S85-44253 (November 1985) — Five astronauts and two payload specialists make up the crew, scheduled to fly aboard the space shuttle Challenger in January of 1986. Crew members are (left to right, front row) astronauts Michael J. Smith, Francis R. (Dick) Scobee and Ronald E. McNair; Ellison S. Onizuka, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis and Judith A. Resnik. McAuliffe and Jarvis are payload specialists, representing the Teacher in Space Project and Hughes Company, respectively. Photo credit: NASA(NOTE: On Jan. 28, 1986, the seven Challenger crew members lost their lives following an explosion during the launch phase of the STS-51L mission.)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The sun comes up behind what remains of the gantry on Launch Pad 34 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.On this day in 1967, a fire erupted on the pad during a preflight test, taking the lives of the Apollo 1 crew, NASA astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

This is the first of three anniversaries marking the loss of NASA astronauts. We honor the lives of Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee, who lost their lives 51 years ago today. Godspeed, Apollo 1.

“If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”
— Gus Grissom

S66-30236 (1 April 1966) — The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has named these astronauts as the prime crew of the first manned Apollo Space Flight. Left to right, are Edward H. White II, command module pilot; Virgil I. Grissom, mission commander; and Roger B. Chaffee, lunar module pilot.Editor’s Note: Astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee lost their lives in a Jan. 27, 1967 fire in the Apollo Command Module (CM) during testing at the launch facility.

I had a big poster of this photo tacked up in my room as a teen. I love the night lighting, the serene glow of Columbia atop her all-white stack, one quiet moment before the onslaught of chaos and fire. It is the deep breath before the plunge, if you will. One of my favorite images from the Space Shuttle Program.